When Your Community Needs You. How We Supported Eaton Fire Survivors in Los Angeles.

By Danny Guerrero

On January 8, 2025, the Eaton Fire swept through Altadena and Pasadena, destroying over 9,000 structures and taking at least 17 lives. My colleague and Culturist Group StoryStudio Lead Kimberli Samuel lives in Altadena. When she reached out that morning, it became clear that her community—a historic cultural haven for Black professionals, artists, and educators since the 1960s—needed coordinated support.

As Los Angeles-based marketing communications experts, we observed that media attention and fundraising efforts were concentrating on wealthier areas, while predominantly BIPOC neighborhoods in Altadena received less visibility. Multiple organizations and individuals were working to address this, and we recognized we could contribute in a specific way.

Our role became straightforward: maintain a verified list of affected BIPOC families, regularly update fundraising progress, and communicate these needs through our networks. We had no disaster relief credentials, but we could do this work consistently over time.

The Fundraising Disparity Issue

Research shows that crowdfunding and disaster relief funding tend to favor communities with larger social networks, established media connections, and existing platforms. For BIPOC families, immigrant communities, and working-class households, this creates a systematic disadvantage in post-disaster fundraising efforts.

Rather than waiting for existing systems to address this gap, we decided to create a focused solution.

How We Mobilized

The Need: Affected families were creating individual fundraising campaigns, but there was no central resource specifically tracking BIPOC families' needs or progress.

Our Contribution:

• Created a spreadsheet tracking affected BIPOC families identified through Kimberli's community connections

• Established an intake process for families to request inclusion

• Set up 4-hour update cycles to maintain current fundraising progress

• Organized listings to highlight families furthest from their goals

This was basic coordination work—essentially database maintenance and regular updates—but it needed someone to do it consistently.

Building Partnership

We partnered with GoFundMe for campaign verification to ensure legitimacy. Every family we tracked was vetted through Kimberli's direct community connections or vouched for by local leaders she knew personally.

GoFundMe took notice of our coordination efforts and actively began working with us to support and amplify the campaign. This partnership became essential—they provided verification infrastructure, promoted campaigns through their platform, and helped ensure legitimacy at scale.

This demonstrated an important principle: when you do sustained coordination work, larger organizations with greater resources may recognize the value and partner to expand impact. We couldn't have achieved verification or reached this level working alone. The partnership allowed us to maintain grassroots community connection while accessing platform-level support and distribution.

Sustained Communication

We communicated the list through available channels: social media, professional networks, direct outreach. The work was repetitive rather than creative: update the spreadsheet, post updates, respond to family requests for inclusion, track progress, repeat.

The value wasn't in doing anything innovative. The value was in doing basic coordination work consistently over three months when initial attention had moved elsewhere.

Results

Collective Impact Overview:

• 152 BIPOC families connected to support through coordinated tracking

• $4.4 million raised collectively across all campaigns we tracked

• 69.4% average fundraising completion rate

• 0 families left completely unfunded on our list

• 80 GoFundMe campaigns directly coordinated and verified in collaboration with GoFundMe

• 4-hour update cycles maintained for three months

Note: These funds were raised through the combined efforts of thousands of individual donors, GoFundMe's platform and promotional support, media coverage, and multiple organizational partners. Our role was coordination, tracking, and community-level communication.

Attribution matters here: These funds came from thousands of individual donors responding to various outreach efforts. GoFundMe provided platform infrastructure, verification support, and their own promotional efforts. Media coverage brought additional visibility. Other organizations and individuals were conducting parallel efforts.

Our specific contribution was maintaining verified tracking, communicating regularly with affected families, updating progress every four hours, and distributing information through our professional networks. We were one piece of a broader community response, doing work that we could sustain over time: database maintenance, regular communication, and network coordination.

The question this raises isn't "what did we accomplish?" but rather "what can any organization contribute when they commit to doing consistent, unglamorous coordination work in their own community?"

Why This Matters To Us.

The overlap between our regular work and what was needed in this situation was substantial. Most businesses have capabilities that could apply to crisis situations:

• Building relationships with specific communities

• Communicating effectively with different audiences

• Understanding what various groups value and need

• Leveraging networks to connect people with resources

• Tracking and reporting on progress

Our work in tourism marketing provided these applications:

Community Engagement: Experience building relationships with diverse communities for travel marketing translated to identifying families, verifying needs, and mobilizing support through trusted channels.

Storytelling: Skills in crafting destination narratives that resonate across cultures applied to presenting each family's situation clearly while maintaining authenticity.

Cultural Understanding: Knowledge of how different communities make decisions and communicate preferences informed our approach to outreach and messaging.

Network Leverage: Professional relationships built over years created access to potential donors beyond typical disaster relief channels.

Other industries have equivalent transferable skills. Technology companies understand systems and platforms. Financial services firms understand resource allocation. Healthcare organizations understand care coordination. Educational institutions understand communication strategies.

The question for any organization is whether they can identify how their existing capabilities might serve urgent community needs during crisis situations.

Now What?

Families continue navigating complex insurance and rebuilding processes. Individuals and organizations interested in supporting recovery can connect with local mutual aid organizations and community rebuilding initiatives, such as the Eaton Fire Collective, which provide local nonprofit aid and resource listings on their website.